The demand for drinking water grew sixfold in the 20th century and it is expected to increase another 40 percent by 2025, according to the United Nations, making desalination of seawater a necessity.
FORBES: San Diego Fishing for Fresh Drinking Water in Pacific Ocean
In federal water desalination policy, why the politically preferred brackish groundwater desalination instead of seawater?
FORBES: Barack Obama's BRAIN Initiative Vs. Bioengineered Gills And One-Wheeled SegWays
Poseidon's solution is to develop two of the world's largest desalination plants within miles of each other in Southern California.
One executive wished for a "fountain of youth" pill, while another wished for a simple, cheap means of water desalination, a technology that could transform the lives of millions of the world's poor.
Critics of desalination agree, adding that such high costs are preventing those U.S. cities that are actually transforming seawater into potable water from fully utilizing their existing facilities.
FORBES: San Diego Fishing for Fresh Drinking Water in Pacific Ocean
Poseidon will probably make out well on this investment, but the risk associated with putting so much capital into a business that is not yet commercially viable means we won't see a building boom of desalination plants in California anytime soon.
"Desalination started here 50 years ago, " said Corrado Sommariva, president of the International Desalination Association.
Bolting cooling facilities onto an OTEC generator, and also using some of the resulting power for desalination on islands like the Bahamas that are short of fresh water, helps tip the economic balance in favour of OTEC.
The lake is an industrial byproduct of the desalination system used to meet the UAE's water needs.
This plant is a small-scale model of two desalination plants Poseidon is proposing, one for Carlsbad and another for Huntington Beach.
"Desalination requires a lot of power ... we estimate that about four tonnes of carbon are emitted per million gallons of freshwater produced here, " he says, with reference to the energy-intensive process of removing salt from seawater (see factbox).
CNN: Counting the carbon cost of bringing water to the desert
The developers of the Carlsbad Desalination Project, meanwhile, also just won a critical court case filed by an environmental organization, called Surfrider Foundation.
FORBES: San Diego Fishing for Fresh Drinking Water in Pacific Ocean
California's Department of Water Resources says it would like ocean water desalination to add 500, 000 acre-feet a year of water to the Golden State's supplies, a modest amount compared with California's overall water consumption.
It is equivalent to the quantity of fresh water proposed to be imported from Turkey and the total annual production capacity of a major seawater desalination plant.
In Corralejo, a wind farm is associated to a water desalination plant, while the University of La Laguna is developing a biofuel production project using jatropha curas seeds.
The water company has agreed to buy 75 GWh of this output to run Beckton sewage works, which serves 3.5 million people, and the nearby desalination plant, operated in times of drought or other emergencies.
Ocean water desalination will not be a viable source of water for agriculture for decades.
FORBES: Drill It, Dam it, Log It: How To Fight Eco-Tyranny In America
Qatar gets 100 percent of its drinking water from desalination, and concentrated brine is expelled into the Persian Gulf.
FORBES: Should Countries With No Water Be Pushing for Growth?
Foster Wheeler could hedge its exposure to fossil fuels by buying its way into the business of building nuclear power or desalination plants.
In general, the solar thermal has greater flexibility when used with co-generation systems, such as combining production of power and thermal for desalination or absorption cooling.
FORBES: Thailand Opens The First of Fifteen Solar Thermal Plants Using Solarlite Technology
Natural gas development will drive the construction of additional power generation, desalination facilities, and petrochemical plants, all capital intensive undertakings that cannot be supported using existing financing mechanism accessible to Israel.
While large-scale desalination is not uncommon in those parts of the world where natural water resources are scarce -- such as Texas and Australia -- the UAE is by some margin, according to Iannelli, the industry's most active player.
CNN: Counting the carbon cost of bringing water to the desert
In fact, 50% of all the world's desalination takes place in the Gulf.
CNN: Counting the carbon cost of bringing water to the desert
With water already in short supply in the northern half of the country, Beijing is alarmed by the cost of solutions like diversion projects and desalination.
While low flow fixtures, rainfall collection, and solar panels help to conserve water and energy, the desalination plant and wind farm that were part of the original plan are the kinds of large-scale facilities that would make this community truly stand out as a worldwide front-runner in sustainability.
FORBES: Will Loreto, Mexico Be One Of The World's Most Sustainable Urban Destinations?
Last month the University of Johannesburg narrowly defeated a motion to cancel its water desalination research agreement with Ben-Gurion University.
Just north of San Diego, on a site overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Poseidon Resources is building the biggest water desalination plant in the United States.
应用推荐